Friday, April 13, 2012

Mission Statement Retreat 2012

In our times, it is critical for every business and organization to revisit its mission statement from time to time. Mission statements are, after all, a vital expression of an institution’s guiding values and ideals! Therefore, every responsible entity must periodically check to see whether its current practice is in line with its fundamental principles. Indeed, if the mission statement is not being adhered to, the organizational leadership must engage in serious, sober deliberation and make immediate changes. They must write a new mission statement.

As a long-established internet institution – I do not like to say “legend” – the IAT is not exempt from this responsibility. So, looking at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar for the first time since November 2007, I notice that we have indeed let the mission statement get out of line with the action:

The Life and Times of Michael5000 aims to be the internet's preeeminent provider of difficult pop quizzes on arbitrary topics. It further seeks to delight its community of creative, engaging, drop-dead sexy, and bracingly intelligent readers with glib little posts about the creative arts and dork culture generally, including but not limited to literature, film, the visual arts, music, history, geography, and college football.

See, this mission statement just isn’t working any more.

It didn’t get the memo on the name change.

Pop quizzes are yesterday’s news.

It doesn’t say a single thing about postage!

Or an art tournament!

Or flags, but then we’re done with flags. The mission statement kind of sat out the flag era.

And so on.

Fortunately, it is still right on the mark about the “community of creative, engaging, drop-dead sexy, and bracingly intelligent readers.” And perhaps as one of those readers, Dear Reader, you’d be willing to help me “brainstorm” some core concepts for the new mission statement! If so, remember that a good mission statement needs to be:

1) Clear
2) Foreward-looking
3) Specific. But with wiggle room. You don’t want to tie yourself down, after all. In fact, maybe “specific” is the wrong word. Maybe a mission statement should be “vague.”
4) Inclusive. I’m not sure what I mean by that, but it sounds great.
5) Brief, always, for is not brevity the soul of wit; and,
6) Pompous

7 comments:

The Life and Times of Michael5000 aims to delight its community of creative, engaging, drop-dead sexy, and bracingly intelligent readers with stunningly well-written posts about things that interest Michael5000, 'cause you should be interested in them too.

"The Infitite Art Tournament is an epic confrontation between a community of creative, engaging, opinionated, drop-dead sexy, & bracingly intelligent readers and the superset that is all things that Art, including, but not limited to literature, film, the visual arts, music, and even horticulture, presented, moderated and spearheaded by the magnificent Michael5000 in the form of clever, witty, and posts and critiques that may or may not indulge his private penchant for postage."

And I'd like to point out, there are other flag tournaments out there just begging to be tackled (Brazil, Russia, anyone?) and vexillogrphy is a form of art. Just sayin'.

November 30 -- 7.31 miles is a distance record for the state of Colorado! And at about 97 miles, November 2014 is my sixth best-ever month.

Our Mission Statement

As the internet's preeminent site for interactive, democratic art appreciation, Infinite Art Tournament frees great art from the straitjackets of chronology and categorical conventions in order to put it in a new straitjacket of its own devising. The IAT further seeks to delight its community of creative, bracingly intelligent, and drop-dead sexy readers with glib but cheerful dispatches from the worlds of literature, film, the visual arts, music, chemistry, Shakespeare, postal ephemera, vexillology, and hagiography. College football rarely comes up.